A lot of food is still safe to consume after it’s expiration date, tho. I think in the US it’s called ‘best by’ or sth like that, underlining that it isn’t necessarily a hard expiration date, just that it tastes the best before this date.
And there are plenty of restaurants and catering companies that routinely just throw huge amounts of unsold/uneaten food away at the end of each business day.
Food isn’t instantly poisonous as of the best by date, but producers will have insurance that covers them for medical costs if someone gets sick from their food.
Obviously, that insurer is not going to cover them if the stuff is sold (or distributed) after the best by date has expired.
Suppose your local grocery store starts a “best by” program and gives out the free food which is out of date. Some customer eats a free bread role which is a tiny bit stale but otherwise satisfying… and then eats a dead pigeon the find on the side of the road.
A major part of the “inefficiency of logistics” is caused by greed. It costs too much to distribute… because it doesn’t make them enough money to do so.
Yes, yes, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” amirite?
After all, we all get to see how all the other roughly 2.17 million (according to IUCN Red List) known species beyond Homo sapiens, from avians (and especially birds!) to fishes and whales and dolphins and wild felines and so on so forth, we all see them practicing the Rothbardian, Mises-ian, Rand-ian and Friedman-ian economic principles such as the Laissez-Fairetale economy.
Two days ago I got the presence of Ms. Hootie, a Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus) who visited me in my backyard and told me about her successful startup company, Ornithoracle Webservices Ltd. (unfortunately she’s not hiring Senior DevOps positions yet, but I managed to connect with her “L🦉kedIn” (it’s read “LOOkedIn”, the LinkedIn for owls) so I’m now part of the talents database, looking forward for the brilliant future in which she decides to hire new talents to the nest she’s planning for 2027 to expand her business to Gliese-581g). She has shown me her extensive portfolio of clients and her diversified stock papers (she invests in MICE, FRRT, OPSM, CRKT and other very yielding businesses; in fact she seems to love investing in MICE, as she keeps watching it to grab more of it the instant it’s wandering anywhere low).
Capitalism is practically a fundamental part of Evolution here in this Pale Blue Dot! In fact, Ms Hootie also told me she heard capitalism is very trendy in Gliese-581g either (hence why she’s planning to do business there), and that the Big Bang was the “initial market boom” where the first CEOs and shareholders popped up into existence and extend the glorious invisible hand of the Market throughout the cosmos (it’s especially handful if you got a wallet full of stocks like Ms Hootie has).
While some of the food waste is because of logistics, the majority of it is not, and one could argue that food shortages are because of logistics; they are one and the same.
When you have food deserts and grocery stores gauge how profitable they are by how much food they throw away, then it’s more than “well the food went bad”.
I agree that there is the liability argument to be made that no company wants to deal with regarding food. That’s why they spend the effort to recall products when they find something wrong with them, en masse. That’s why in places like Wal-Mart, responsible associates take damaged food products like dented cans and give them to claims to be proceeded. Because nobody deserves to buy that kind of stuff.
However, there should be a point where if a grocery store or Wal-Mart for example, know that food product isn’t selling as fast as they thought or that they just aren’t seeing sales for it. Then yeah, they could do something about that than just mindlessly tossing it, like they could strike deals with food banks and charities to give those out with the understanding that they are about to go bad soon.
What are you really saying though?
Here charities do sell a lot of this food, where it’s possible and viable to do so.
You can’t sell food which is out of date because there’s a high likelihood it will be harmful.
Yes, there is a lot of food waste, but IMO that’s the inefficiency of logistics rather than greed or trust.
A lot of food is still safe to consume after it’s expiration date, tho. I think in the US it’s called ‘best by’ or sth like that, underlining that it isn’t necessarily a hard expiration date, just that it tastes the best before this date.
And there are plenty of restaurants and catering companies that routinely just throw huge amounts of unsold/uneaten food away at the end of each business day.
Yeah but it’s a legal liability problem.
Food isn’t instantly poisonous as of the best by date, but producers will have insurance that covers them for medical costs if someone gets sick from their food.
Obviously, that insurer is not going to cover them if the stuff is sold (or distributed) after the best by date has expired.
Suppose your local grocery store starts a “best by” program and gives out the free food which is out of date. Some customer eats a free bread role which is a tiny bit stale but otherwise satisfying… and then eats a dead pigeon the find on the side of the road.
You can probably see the problem.
A major part of the “inefficiency of logistics” is caused by greed. It costs too much to distribute… because it doesn’t make them enough money to do so.
Yes it costs money to distribute free food. Obviously no business is going to do that. That’s not greed.
Yes, yes, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” amirite?
After all, we all get to see how all the other roughly 2.17 million (according to IUCN Red List) known species beyond Homo sapiens, from avians (and especially birds!) to fishes and whales and dolphins and wild felines and so on so forth, we all see them practicing the Rothbardian, Mises-ian, Rand-ian and Friedman-ian economic principles such as the Laissez-Faire
taleeconomy.Two days ago I got the presence of Ms. Hootie, a Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus) who visited me in my backyard and told me about her successful startup company, Ornithoracle Webservices Ltd. (unfortunately she’s not hiring Senior DevOps positions yet, but I managed to connect with her “L🦉kedIn” (it’s read “LOOkedIn”, the LinkedIn for owls) so I’m now part of the talents database, looking forward for the brilliant future in which she decides to hire new talents to the nest she’s planning for 2027 to expand her business to Gliese-581g). She has shown me her extensive portfolio of clients and her diversified stock papers (she invests in MICE, FRRT, OPSM, CRKT and other very yielding businesses; in fact she seems to love investing in MICE, as she keeps watching it to grab more of it the instant it’s wandering anywhere low).
Capitalism is practically a fundamental part of Evolution here in this Pale Blue Dot! In fact, Ms Hootie also told me she heard capitalism is very trendy in Gliese-581g either (hence why she’s planning to do business there), and that the Big Bang was the “initial market boom” where the first CEOs and shareholders popped up into existence and extend the glorious invisible hand of the Market throughout the cosmos (it’s especially handful if you got a wallet full of stocks like Ms Hootie has).
/s
!asklemmy@lemmy.world
While some of the food waste is because of logistics, the majority of it is not, and one could argue that food shortages are because of logistics; they are one and the same.
When you have food deserts and grocery stores gauge how profitable they are by how much food they throw away, then it’s more than “well the food went bad”.
I agree that there is the liability argument to be made that no company wants to deal with regarding food. That’s why they spend the effort to recall products when they find something wrong with them, en masse. That’s why in places like Wal-Mart, responsible associates take damaged food products like dented cans and give them to claims to be proceeded. Because nobody deserves to buy that kind of stuff.
However, there should be a point where if a grocery store or Wal-Mart for example, know that food product isn’t selling as fast as they thought or that they just aren’t seeing sales for it. Then yeah, they could do something about that than just mindlessly tossing it, like they could strike deals with food banks and charities to give those out with the understanding that they are about to go bad soon.
I think this is pretty much what happens. That’s how food banks get food.